Beadle's New Dime Novels: Nat Wolfe

About this issue

This serialized romance by Mrs. M. V. Victor follows Nat Wolfe, a seasoned frontier hunter, as he encounters an emigrant wagon train heading to Pike's Peak during gold rush season. The narrative opens with Wolfe's chance meeting with Timothy Wright's struggling family—including Wright's sickly self, his wife, young children, and Wright's niece Elizabeth, a melancholy seventeen-year-old of striking beauty despite frontier hardships. Wolfe assists the family and provides crucial information about water sources ahead. Though Wolfe is a man of the wilderness—ten years uncivilized, a buffalo hunter and Indian fighter—he finds himself drawn to Elizabeth's quiet grace and sad beauty. The emigrants, consisting of thirty or forty men with few women, regard Wolfe as a renowned and reassuring presence. As the train prepares to resume travel toward distant water, Elizabeth returns his kindly smile, and Wolfe considers traveling alongside them, while Elizabeth watches the mysterious horseman with newfound interest and longing.